Not that I have been keeping up regularly with this blog, but for sure I will be MIA for the next few days, weeks. I have a Studies paper due two Thursdays ago, another Studies paper due this Thursday, and a Term Research Paper for Art and Society also due this Thursday…none of which I have begun. Along with that, all the Japanese studying and what not. Then Friday and Saturday I get to relax a bit and clean up the place, then Sunday, big things happen! 🙂 Now off to bed. Have to get some rest before my attempts to pull the aforementioned papers out of my…well, you know what.

I am in the process of looking for a new home. A new home for my writing, that is. As you all might’ve heard before, I absolutely abhor all of the themes available for WordPress, they don’t fit me at all. I contemplated long and hard about going back to Blogger, multiple times, but always stuck it through. Well, now a lot of the WordPress themes aren’t allowing me to space my pictures correctly, which might seem like a relatively unimportant issue but, to me it matters. I’ve already made a Blogger and exported everything from here to there, but there’s just something about Blogger. I’m not completely happy with it. My favorite place to blog nowadays is Tumblr, but I’m wary about the size of my posts and the html functionality (or lack thereof). Anyway, this was just a brief update. Stay tuned. As I’ve said, I’m supposed to be working on my term papers right now (it’s due on Thursday! AH!) and so…dammit I just messed up my nails….And so, if all goes well I’ll be able to take my mind off blogging and write my papers, and therefore a decision won’t be made until the next week or so. But just a heads up! Man I really messed up my nails. MAN!

A few Wednesdays ago my Buddy and her friend came over to my apartment. I didn’t know why she chose that date but found out later from her friend that it was her Birthday that day! So we turned the party into a surprise birthday party. Literally I ran over to my neighbor’s, was like, Did you know today is Yuko’s Birthday?! And she was like, yea. And I was like, How’d you know?! I didn’t know! And she was like, Facebook! And I was like…Freak! And that’s why I’m on Facebook again, not that anyone noticed I was off for a bit. Lolz. Getting back on FB also means I lost a bet with Reed but I don’t care. I’m the dominant one in our relationship. Anyway, I digress. I convinced my neighbor to bike to the grocery store and get my buddy a cake or pie or something while I pretended like this was planned all along. Haha, yay. Anyway, it turned out pretty well.

We had a Spring Roll party. I bought and prepared all the ingredients. People were supposed to pay me but only a few people did. Next time I’m demanding money first. Lolz.

Haha. It turned out relatively well! I hoped!

People really liked the dipping sauce I made for the Spring Rolls, which is the most important part, of course, so I’m glad. Everything wasn’t hard to prepare, so I might do it again. Next time I’ll know better how much of each ingredient to get—less veggies, more meat. Haha!

A few weeks ago a friend and I made another trip out to Kyoto. We went to Byoudo-in, which I had really been insistent about, and some other places that I can’t name…because I’ve forgotten. Byoudo-in turned out to be less cool than I thought it would be, but it was still very, very pretty.

–On the way there.–

As I said, very scenic, very beautiful.

After Byoudo-in we headed to our next destination. On the way there we happened upon this cute little shop that sold really adorable things for relatively cheap, so I bought a bunch. HA! ‘Tis me. This guy owned the place. He ‘checked out’ with an abacus! How can you not buy from a man who uses an abacus?!

The next place we went to. We went there specifically because our teacher in Art and Society said that there were rock gardens here designed by Shigemori. So, why not? We paid and went to one part, then found out as we were leaving that the gardens by Shigemori were actually in another part of the place, so we thought, might as well we’re already here, and ended up paying to go to the other part. Glad we did. I never thought rock gardens were so interesting!

Lastly, we went to the Tori gates place. Idk what it’s really called. Basically families pay to put up these tori gates for good luck, or something. We didn’t walk the whole way up the mountain. I’m not much of a hiker, HA!

Walking under all the Tori gates also made me feel a little claustrophobic but that’s just cuz I’m a wimp.

This was probably the last time I make an all day trip out to Kyoto. The place has a lot of things to see, but after a few of the big sites, everything gets a little repetitive.

I’ve enjoyed, pretty much, each time I’ve been out to Kyoto though. It was worth the 2 hour train trip each way and the approximately $25 in train fare. Haha.